Rush wheeled and looked sharply behind him. For several weeks he had experienced the recurrent sensation of being followed, but until to-night he had been too absorbed to give a vague suspicion definite form. He stood still, and was immediately aware that somebody else had halted, after withdrawing into the shade of one of the trees that lined Atlantic Avenue. He approached this figure swiftly, but almost at his first step it detached itself and strolled forward. Rush saw that it was a woman, and then recognised Miss Sarah Austin of the _New York Evening News_. He recalled that she had approached him several times with the request for an interview with Mrs. Balfame; and that she had taxed his politeness by trying to draw him into a discussion of the case. "Oh, good evening," he said grimly. "I turned back because it occurred to me that I was being followed." "I was following you," Miss Austin retorted coolly. "I saw you turn into the Avenue two blocks up, and tried to overtake you--I don't like to be out so late alone, especially in this haunted village. The knowledge that everybody in it is thinking of that murder nearly all the time has a curious psychological effect. Won't you walk as far as Alys Crumley's with me?" "Certainly!" Rush, wondering if all women were liars, fell into step. "I've been given a roving commission in the Balfame case," continued Miss Austin in her impersonal businesslike manner, which, combined with her youth and good looks, had surprised guarded facts from men as wary as Rush. "Not to hunt for additional evidence, of course, but stuff for good stories. I've had a number of dandy interviews with prominent Elsinore women, as you may have seen if you condescend to glance at the Woman's Page. Isn't it wonderful how they stand by her?" "Why not? They believe her to be innocent, as of course she is." "How automatically you said that! I wonder if you really believe it--unless, of course, you know who did do it. But in that case you would produce the real culprit. What a tangle it is! A lawyer has to believe in his client's innocence, I suppose, unless he's quite an uncommon jury actor. I don't know what to believe, myself. But of one thing I am convinced: Alys Crumley knows something--something positive." Rush, who had paid little attention to her chatter, which he rightly assumed to be a mere verbal process of "leading up," turned to her sharply. "What do you mean by that?"